That night just before eight, a gray sky overhead, Louise and Cutty ring the Brices’ doorbell. Allison answers quickly but shows no sign of opening up her house to them. “Hello, Mrs. Brice,” says Louise. “We were wondering if you still refuse to answer our questions.”
“Yes,” she says simply, with an expression that would make a poker player proud.
Louise shakes her head. “Mind telling me why?”
“I just told you I won’t answer questions, Detective. And then you ask me one?”
Cutty jumps in, sensing Louise’s anger. “May we inspect your phone?”
“No,” says Allison.
Louise plants a smile on her face, an old trick to contain her emotions. “I don’t understand what you’re doing here, Mrs. Brice.”
“Bruce Ghadiali will,” she says. “Tell him hi for me.” She shuts the door.
Louise stands, flat-footed, trying to form a word with her lips.
“You live long enough, you see everything,” Cutty whispers.
Louise turns and walks down the brick walkway, Cutty following.
“We can get her phone, at least,” says Cutty. “Maybe we don’t have probable cause yet, but we will. Then we’ll get a warrant.”
“I know that,” says Louise. “You know who else knows that? Allison Brice. She knows it’s just a matter of time and she’s pissing us off. Why, Cutty? What does she gain by adelay?”
Four Weeks Before April Fools’Day
26
Luke
The wind bites my face as Trinity and I walk along the sidewalk, snow crunching under our boots. The houses in this neighborhood sit back from the street behind low stone walls and hedges: broad Prairie-style spreads with exaggerated overhangs, brick colonials with careful symmetry, arts-and-crafts with deep porches and square pillars.
“You sure you want to do this tonight?” she asks. “It’s freezing.”
I’m not sure Ieverwant to do this. Talking about the worst moment of my life? Reliving the day that I lost the thing that made me special, the months of agonizing rehab and physical therapy, knowing all the while that no matter how hard I worked to get my arm and shoulder back into shape, I’d never be a fraction of the pitcher I had once been?
But I made a commitment to Trinity and this documentary. It’s the right thing to do. Besides, I’ve spent the last week, since getting suspended, staring at walls. There are only so many miles you can run, so many weights you can lift, so many lunges and crunches and planks. I need a task.
“I’m sure,” I say.
A gust rattles the icicles hanging from the gutters; I jam my hands deeper into my pockets. Grace Park in early March feels dormant: lawns buried, gardens asleep, everything yearning for spring. Theevening streets are quiet except for the scrape of a shovel somewhere down the block.
“We called it riding the hill,” I say. “But it was really a race. My grade school, Hilltop Elementary, got its name for a reason. The hill was behind the school, this long, angled slope. Think of the perfect tobogganing hill and you get the picture. But the eight or nine months of the year when there wasn’t snow, we would ride down it on our bikes.”
“The school let you do that?” Trinity brings her handheld recorder toward her mouth as she speaks, then moves it back toward me.
“Oh, God, no. The school erected a fence, maybe five feet high, keeping us away from the hill. But we were kids, right? Especially in the summer, when very few adults were around. The way it worked, we’d leave our bikes at the racks by the school. We’d trudge up the hill, and one person was appointed the ‘gofer.’ ”
“The ‘gofer’? What did the ‘gofer’ do?”
“Well, someone had to go around to the front, grab the bikes from the rack, walk them to the fence, and hand them over the fence to the rest of us.”
“Got it.”
“Then we’d race,” I say. “One at a time. Each of us would be timed individually. Someone would stand at the bottom with a stopwatch. Usually it was Jimmy Wilding, because he had a frilly watch with all kinds of functions, and I always thought he was afraid to ride the hill. Anyway, the guy at the bottom would do the old ‘On your mark, get set, go!’ and then one of us would fly down the hill, riding as fast as we could, from the top of the hill down to the manhole cover by the sidewalk. Which was not very far from the street.”
“So basically, insanely dangerous and reckless,” says Trinity.
